A Christian's Priestly Responsibility
Malachi 2:1-3
5th February 2021
Malachi 2v1-3
"And now this admonition is for you, O priests.
If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honour my name," says the Lord
Almighty, "I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have
already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honour me.
Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the offal from
your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it."
The Bible contains many passages in which God challenges His people, and we need to accept those challenges and allow them to speak to us. This week's passage speaks to us in our role as God's priests. It begins, "And now this admonition is for you, O priests.". If we're to understand this passage and apply it correctly to our own situation, we must first understand that all Christians are priests. Because some denominations call their church leaders "priests" we can have some sense that a priest is a church leader. But the New Testament clearly teaches that all Christians are priests:
1 Peter 2:5
you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,
offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God,
that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful
light.
Revelation 1:6
and [Christ] has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father — to him
be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
Revelation 5:10
"You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the
earth."
Revelation 20:6
Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no
power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for
a thousand years.
A priest stands between God and people. He or she represents God to people by teaching the Bible and by offering them God's forgiveness through Christ, and he or she represents people to God by praying for them. That is, a priest intercedes between people and God. Every one of us is a priest and so every one of us has this responsibility. All Christians together are God's royal priesthood. Every Christian is as much a priest as any other Christian. What a privilege it is that we're God's priesthood!
But this also means that there is no get-out clause. You can't pass this passage on to your leaders. It's for everyone who belongs to Jesus.
Malachi 2:2-3
If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honour my name," says the Lord
Almighty, "I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have
already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honour me.
Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the offal from
your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it."
These words show that God is serious - very serious. God says "If you do not listen" and then proclaims the punishment that will follow if we don't: He will curse us, and He will curse our blessings. This doesn't mean we're going to lose our salvation, but it does mean we're going to be punished. Every covenant comes with blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.
Has God got your attention?
The Old Covenant which applied to ancient Israel, and the New Covenant which applies to us, are very different, and we need to be careful how we apply Old Covenant teaching to New Covenant believers. Membership of God's Old Covenant people was usually obtained by physical birth. Membership of God's New Covenant people is by spiritual birth. So when God says here that he will curse the priests' descendants, I don't think that curse applies to our physical children, but to our spiritual children. If we don't pay attention to God's admonition, then we will bring fewer people to Christ than we otherwise would, and they will be less blessed by God, less fully formed in Christ, not least because we would be poor examples to them.
God says He'll punish the Old Testament priests by smearing their faces with the offal – or dung – of their sacrifices. The priests would serve in the temple, offering various animals in sacrifice. God says that He would take either the unclean parts of these animals, or their dung, and smear it on the priests' faces. I don't know if we should take that literally or not. Either way, the offering of the temple sacrifices would become extremely unpleasant for them, and make them ashamed, and it would make them unclean so they could no longer offer the sacrifices, and thus no longer function as priests.
Perhaps the best way to apply this to us – God's New Covenant priests – is to say that our offerings of praise and worship would become unpleasant for us – a burden rather than a joy. If you find going to church worship meetings and singing God's praises has become a duty and not a profound blessing, then perhaps you should ask yourself if some of God's punishment is resting on you. Is your sacrifice of praise still genuinely praise? Is it still a sacrifice you gladly make? Or are you close to being disqualified as God's priest? Is your ministry close to being cursed?
Has God got your attention now?
God says He will curse us if we don't listen to his warning, if we don't set our hearts to honour Him. I know we all respect the name of Jesus. I know we all mean it when we pray "Hallowed by Thy name". But have we set our hearts to honour His name, or is honouring God's name something we're only prepared to get involved in when it suits us, when it's convenient, when we feel like it, when we haven't got a better offer, when it's safe? If you're a Christian, then you're a priest of the Most High God, and He wants your dedicated service, not just the spare moments of your life.